THE FOUR TRUTHS.

3. The right words, or perfect meditation.

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4. The right mode of acting, or of keeping in view in every action a pure and honest aim. 5. The right way of supporting life, or of gaining a

subsistence by an honest profession unstained by sins. 6. The rightly directed intelligence, which leads to

final salvation ("to the other side of the river"). 7. The right memory, which enables man to impress strongly in his mind what should not be forgotten. 8. The right meditation, or tranquil mind, by which alone steadiness in meditation can be attained, undisturbed by any event whatever.

It has been doubted with much reason, whether Sakyamuni taught the four truths in this form; but as he must have spoken about the means of arriving at final liberation, or salvation, I have added here these eight classes of the path, which are suggested to him already in very early Sūtras.1

The theory of the four truths has been formulated in a short sentence, which has been discovered on many ancient Buddhist images, and which is besides actually recited as a kind of confession of faith, and added to religious treatises. It runs thus: "Of all things proceeding from cause, the cause of their procession hath the Tathāgata explained. The great Sramana has likewise declared the cause of the extinction of all things."" Tathagatha and

Concerning the four truths see: Csoma "Notices," in As. Res., Vol. XX., pp. 294, 303; Burnouf's "Introduction," pp. 290, 629, and "Le Lotus de la Bonne Loi," App. V. Another series of eight classes, which is decidedly the produce of the later schools, will be noticed in the next chapter.

2 This sentence is also the conclusion in the address to the Buddhas of

Sramana are two epithets of Sakyamuni, as explained before.

The ancient religious works apply to Sakyamuni's followers the title of Sravakas "hearers," a name also having reference to their spiritual perfection. The Buddhists of this period seem to have called themselves Sramanas, "those who restrain their thoughts, the purely acting," in allusion to their moral virtues as well as their general conduct.'

confession, for which see Chapter XI.-In the translation of this sentence I have followed Hodgson; see his "Illustrations," p. 158. Other translations of various readings have been published by Prinsep, Csoma, Mill, and recently compared by Colonel Sykes. See his "Miniature Chaityas and inscriptions of the Buddhist religious dogma," in R. As. Soc., Vol. XVI., p. 37. The Sanskrit text written with Tibetan characters, and the Tibetan version is given in Plate I.

1 Wassiljew, "Der Buddhismus," p. 69.

CHAPTER IV.

THE HINAYANA SYSTEM.

CONTROVERSIES ABOUT SAKYAMUNI'S LAWS.-THE HINAYANA DOCTRINES. The twelve Nidānas; character of the precepts; incitation to abstract meditation; gradations of perfection.

AT the time of Sakyamuni's death the inhabitants of India were not yet so advanced in civilisation as to have a literature, and the claims of the Buddhist to scriptural documents of his law written down during his life (as the Nepalese believe), or immediately after his death (which is the opinion of the Chinese), are decidedly groundless. New researches have made it very probable that the alphabets in which the earliest historical records we know, the inscriptions of king Asoka (about 250 B.C.), are written, were imitated from the Phoenician alphabet, communicated to the Indians by merchants of that nation as early perhaps as the fifth century B.C., at which period already Greek letters became known in the ancient districts of Gandhara and Sindhu, the countries at the foot of the